A worldwide religious movement with some 1.2 million adult members in the year 2000, Mennonites are the direct descendants of the Anabaptists (re-baptizers), a radical wing of the Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century. Although sharing basic doctrines of the Lutheran and Reformed faiths, Anabaptists held that these Protestants were too closely aligned with coercive governments. Contending for full religious liberty, Anabaptists were the first of what were called the Free Churches. They rejected the ancient practice of infant baptism as nonscriptural, and hence baptized only adults who could freely confess their conversion faith. These converts joined in covenants with fellow believers, pledging to support each other both spiritually and materially. Because they refused to swear oaths or take up arms, Anabaptists were cruelly persecuted as societal rebels. Emerging first in the Swiss cantons and southern Germany, they were soon widely scattered throughout Europe, where at twentieth century's end they still lived in small numbers.
Anabaptists were first called Mennonites in the Low Countries after Menno Simons, a Catholic priest before his dramatic conversion in 1536 to the cause of these hunted heretics. His persistent pastoral visits and extensive writings served to gather, maintain, and unite the dissenters, who were badly dispersed and distressed by governmental and state church pressure, both Catholic and Protestant. Some Anabaptist bodies, however, long continued to use names other than Mennonite, such as Taufgesinnten or Doopsgezinden (that is, those who are baptism-minded).
Mennonites came early to North America, and are mentioned as being in the colony of New Amsterdam in 1653. The beginnings of mass migration to the New World came in 1683 with the arrival in Philadelphia of some forty persons of Mennonite background. Later waves of migration took place throughout the eighteenth century, with most migrants settling in Pennsylvania before a dispersal southward and westward. In the nineteenth century large numbers of Mennonites came from northern Europe, some by way of Russia. Most Mennonite immigrants located in rural enclaves, where they lived in close-knit clusters to perpetuate their faith. The first Mennonites to migrate to Canada did so shortly after the beginning of the Revolutionary War, seeking relief as conscientious objectors to military pressures. Many Mennonites arrived in Canada after World War I and II after harrowing experiences as refugees.
Although Mennonites in Canada and the United States over the years have separated into a confusing number of small denominations, there are four major groupings: the (Old) Mennonites, largely of Swiss and German extraction; the General Conference Mennonites, largely of Dutch and Russian extraction; the Mennonite Brethren, the result of a schism in Russia in 1860 and heavily influenced by German Pietism; and the Amish, a conservative branch of Swiss and south German Mennonites who separated in 1693. In 2001, the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church united to form the new Mennonite Church USA, although some congregations departed in protest.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, Mennonites in North America largely spurned higher education and other institutions and agencies, but by the beginning of the twentieth century their life was marked by a surge of institution-building and creation of church programs. Among these institutions are Goshen College of Goshen, Indiana, and Eastern Mennonite University (Harrison-burg, Virginia), both sponsored by the Mennonite Church, and Bethel College of North Newton, Kansas, and Bluff-ton College of Bluffton, Ohio, sponsored by the General Conference Mennonite Church. Mennonites began missionary activity in Africa and Asia at that time and in South America and the Pacific region later on. That explains why in 2000 there were fewer active Mennonites in Europe and North America than in areas outside of those continents. Mennonites and associated groups form about ten thousand congregations in sixty-four nations, using eighty languages.
Mennonites are organized internationally in the Mennonite World Conference, which holds delegate conferences about every five years. Its office is in Strasbourg, France. The world gatherings cannot legislate for member bodies but work to further united witness and service.
A highly respected agency of social amelioration and development is the Mennonite Central Committee (with MCC USA offices in Akron, Pennsylvania, and MCC Canada offices in Winnipeg, Manitoba). The agency was founded in 1920 to coordinate the shipment of relief goods from North America to starving Mennonites in revolution-torn Ukraine. Following World War II, MCC efforts burgeoned until in 2000 it had a combined budget of over $63 million, with 1,511 salaried and volunteer workers in many nations.
Traditionally, Mennonites were known as Plain People, farm families marked by uniformly severe garb and nonconformist ways. Today, most Mennonites are thoroughly integrated into North American society, with many working as teachers, physicians, social workers, and other professionals. Their Anabaptist heritage is most noticeable in their peace stance and vigorous response to human need, as in their Mennonite Disaster Service, which sends volunteer teams to areas of natural catastrophe to clean and rebuild. Once hated heretics, Mennonites have come to be widely known as compassionate and concerned fellow citizens.
Bibliography
Bender, Harold S., et al., eds. The Mennonite Encyclopedia. 5 vols. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1955–1990.
Dyck, Cornelius J. An Introduction to Mennonite History: A Popular History of the Anabaptists and the Mennonites. 3d ed. Scott-dale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1993.
Hostetler, John A. Amish Society. 4th ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1993.
Kraybill, Donald B., and C. Nelson Hostetter. Anabaptist World USA. Scottdale, Pa: Herald Press, 2001.
Kreider, Robert S., gen. ed. The Mennonite Experience in America.4 vols. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1985–1996.
